Zoe Blog

Graduation Show

2007-03-23T11:29:00.000Z

We had our Graduation Showcase at the City Canteen & Bar, just a few doors along from D10. The show had been alot of hard work for everyone involved. Myself and Nic took on the role of overseeing the show, Aled and James designed and built the graduation show site, Lindsey, Carol and Nic all looked at the design for the flyers, Gareth and Rob cut the showcase to be shown via mac as well via Bluetooth to mobile phones, Tom helped to build the LED lights that we had for the show and with the equipment, and Shamim with making sure that the D10 studio was ready for the Mygo House demonstration. It was all hands on deck on the day. Myself and Nic went to the printers to pick up the posters. These posters were good in the sense that everyone had designed their own business card, and these were all together on the poster - each card being perforated so people can tear off each one separately. We only had a few hours to spare before the start of the show, but we had all the flyers ready for beginning of the showcase. James had done really well at obtaining 3 Apple macs for the show. These were on the middle table, along with a few laptops, so that people from industry could look at our portfolios.

We had the Orball flash game on a large Plasma screen, and our digital stories were all on a dvd played through a projector. At 2 points in the evening the Mygo 'House' team, demonstrated the game a few doors up at our D10 office. This worked well, as it requires participation by the user to get the full experience of the game.

All in all the night was a success, and I think that people from industry were suitably impressed. I had a few chats with various people, be they freelancers or from companies around the Bay. I also had a chat with someone who used to be the head of S4C. It was a great environment for everyone to chat and show their work and I was really pleased with how it went. It was a fitting end to my D10 journey.

Portfolio Website

2007-03-23T10:58:00.000Z

I have finished my portfolio website. I went for a clean style, using CSS and Php for the contact form. This site is a portal to view all my work whilst on D10. All of us on D10 completed our sites in time for the Graduation Show, and mine can be viewed at zoebritnell.co.uk

Unique Media

2007-03-23T10:46:00.000Z

We had a presentation by Unique Media, who are based in Bristol. For the first part they talked about general issues to do with encoding and media formats on the web. One point was made that although the quality on the web of video is not as good as on TV the consumer doesn't generally mind because they can choose what and when they watch something on the web. However, if that quality of video was on a dvd or on tv, then the consumer would mind. I think there is alot to be said for consumer choice - if we feel like we have a choice of what to watch, then we will accept that the quality of the picture is not as clear as on tv.

Having said that, Unique Media did go into some detail on how to encode well, and the importance of correct formats and compression, to give the user the best experience.

One point was that when shooting, obviously continuity is very important, as if you retake a shot the speaker and props must be in the same place. This is obvious, but easily overlooked. Another point is that you can start on a wide shot for an intro, and then stop the person talking and zoom into a tighter shot and then they can continue speaking. Cutaways are also vital to a completed piece. Unique Media like the Windows Media file format to export the video as it is good quality and has a wide hosting support. I personally like the Flash format, but it can be more expensive to host and difficult to scale up.

Greenfield and Bluetooth

2007-03-22T15:41:00.000Z

We had our graduation show yesterday, which was very successful - more on this later. Firstly, Rob Light at Greenfield gave us a presentation about mobile marketing and bluetooth technology. The outcome of this connection with Greenfield was that they supported us on a graduation night by letting us encode our D10 showreel with exerpts of all our animations and other screenshots of our work, to be in a format that could be sent to mobile phone via bluetooth. Therefore, whoever came to our showcase last night could access this showcase directly to their mobile phone via their bluetooth connection.

The beauty of bluetooth is that you can receive multimedia information such as adverts, event info. etc via wireless free of charge to your mobile.

Rob Light told us about mobile marketing, i.e. promotional material sent to consumers, usually that you have to sign up for. They have tried this out, for instance, at a rugby match where consumers are notified how to get the information via their mobile and then have access to future events match details.

I like how this way of marketing can be very useful at events, as we found out at our graduation showcase. Also that you have to register, so you don't have unwanted adverts on your phone. For my final module on D10 I researched about the potential impact of multimedia in the developing countries and its use for education, essential information. There is quite alot of scope for mobile phone and bluetooth technology to take off in these countries. I could see the potential for health, education and agricultural information to be downloaded to users, so they can have direct access to essential information that helps their communities.

2 Man Mission Complete

2007-02-18T17:47:00.000Z

Myself and Lindsey presented our completed Flash timeline to our client. Overall, he was very pleased with the outcome. We gave him some copies of the cdrom of the timeline, and it seemed to work well on his older version of PC. He liked how when you click on e.g. community, a new timeline background slides into view. The popups were just how he liked them, and were clear as when they are clicked on to popup, everything else on the timeline is faded into the background. He especially liked the interview for which he had given us assets for, as it made the story more personal. One point he did make was that at first it is not completely clear what the user has to click on. However, he did say that the pulsing speechbubbles makes it alittle easier to understand that you need to click on them.

For future development we could enhance the instructions by showing an animation that demonstrates what the user has to do to view each story. It was discussed in the meeting with the client, that in the future we could add more interviews to the cdrom, if he has more assets, i.e. more photographs of each interviewee.

This is the completed look of the timeline:

The timeline can be viewed online at:

http://www.d10dev-studio.com/ZoeBritnell/cdweb/howfar6.html

2 Man Design and Testing

2007-02-16T12:31:00.000Z

This is an initial design for the timelines:

This was the design that we decided to have for the timelines.

It varies for each interview, depending on the assets that we were given. We only had photos from the person who grew up in Hong Kong (interview one, on the timeline online). This was great to have actual photos of the person, and it was unfortunate that the client was unable to obtain photos for the other 2 interviewees.

This is the menu design for the How far? timeline:

This is an example of the design for a popup which appears when the user clicks on a speechbubble:

When we user tested the timeline, the following points were raised:

It isn't very clear to click on the speechbubbles.

The writing for the interview one in white looks too much like a button.

To resolve this we made the speechbubbles 'pulse', i.e. get larger and smaller so you notice them as interactive. We also changed the font on the interview one, to match that used on the jpg images, so it doesn't look like a button.

Overall, people liked the way the timelines worked, and thought that the design and functionality was good.

2 Man Brief Mission Build

2007-02-16T11:56:00.000Z

The build of the Flash timeline for the Riverside charity began with the development of the a sliding menu. This fitted in well with what we needed to achieve for displaying each interview. I also developed an XML file to store all the text for the interviews and to dynamically pull in the jpg files for the images in the timeline. It was a very good exercise to learn more about XML, and how to structure the file and pull in information dynamically. We eventually decided to have 5 separate images for each section of the interview, i.e. for Home, School, Work, Community, and Future. There is also a separate background for each interview.

Final Design and Game for Mygo

2007-02-16T11:40:00.000Z

This is the final design for the Mystery House game -

This can be viewed online at:

http://www.d10dev-studio.com/AledBartholomew/mygo/house.html

Today we had a video conference with Mygo. This was very productive. They gave very positive feedback for the game. They liked the concept of the mystery house, the animations and look and feel of the design.

They had a couple of pointers for the game -

To add a function so that when people text into to play, their name appears on the television. At the moment their name only appears when they get the answer right.

Also, they would prefer a more 'mystery' angle to the game, rather than just an anagram. This can be achieved by a general knowledge trivia, so behind each window will be a general knowledge question.

Overall they were very pleased with it, and if we make the changes, this game should go live on television in Malaysia, Kazakhstan, and Saudi Arabia.

Mygo Designs

2007-02-16T11:28:00.000Z

This was the initial design for the Mystery House Game:

Further development meant that we designed 2 further treatments:

Design 1:

Design 2:

Mygo feedback - they preferred design 2, and so asked us to go ahead with that one.

Scoping the Mygo Brief

2007-02-16T11:17:00.000Z

The scoping process was a different experience with 5 people in the team, and decided which direction to go in. The process took alittle longer that in the 2 man brief, but it was worth it with clarifying what we were to end up with. The hardest part of the mystery house idea, was coming up with an actual mystery. We did come up with an outline for a story, but decided to simplify it into an anagram game.

The idea for the game is that there will be a short timeframe for people to text into register to play the game. Once they have registered they can play the game. On the TV will be shown a house with 9 windows. People text into vote for which room they would like to visit, eg. they text in their name, and VOTE x (x being the number of the window they want to be opened). Then after a short time the votes will be counted and the window with the highest numbers of votes will be opened. They will then see a letter on a scroll, which zooms into view. As they play the game, each window would be voted to be opened, revealing another letter. The word they have to guess is a 9 letter word. They can text in at anytime when they think they have the answer. When they have the answer right, their name gets displayed on the TV. This encourages people to vote.

Eventually the time for that game ends, and another game would come on the TV.

Video Conference - talking to Malaysia Face to Face

2007-02-16T11:13:00.000Z

We had our first video conference with the team at Mygo in Malaysia. This was a great experience as they are a premier games company in the whole of Malaysia. We pitched the 3 ideas, and awaited feedback. They didn't want us to do the football game, as it has to have the capabilities to be played by multiple players at once, and the concept of the football game meant that people had to wait for their turn to play in the penalty shootout.

They really liked the Mystery House Idea, and so we went ahead and developed this idea.

Mygo Malaysia Brief

2007-02-16T11:04:00.000Z

We were placed in a team of 5 people, and our team was given the Interactive Television Flash Game brief. This brief is quite a challenging one, as none of us had ever built a game for Interactive TV before. This game needs to be for an audience aged 12 to 25 years, which is quite a broad age range. It needs to be in a style that would be work with players texting in their answers and their name would appear on screen. Because of this style of game it needs to be simple, and easy to follow.

This makes the coding of the game alittle more complex, as we need to think about how to get the information from the texts into the game. Also, the gameplay is abit more restricted as people will not have a keyboard or mouse to play it, as in a web game, but only their mobile phone. Other things to consider are colours when it is on a tv as it is different from a PC. For instance, red doesn't look great on the TV. Also, lines and drawings need to about 5 pixels wide, as otherwise they flicker.

After a brainstorm, initial ideas for the game are -

A game based on the Nepalese version of Solitaire.
A mystery house game.
Multiplayer Suduko.
Pass the Pigs.
Consequences.
Football Penalty Shootout.

After discussing these options, we decided to pitch 3 ideas - the Nepalese solitaire, mystery house game, and football Penalty shootout.

Scoping 2 Man Brief

2007-02-16T10:57:00.000Z

We had to ascertain what the client really wants to get out of the production of an interactive timeline for the How Far? project. Firstly, whether he wants something online or offline. We explained in layman's terms that if it is online, he would be able to update it using a content management system. If it is a cdrom, it would not be updatable. Initially the client stated he wanted it online, but when we pushed for a sign off, he changed his mind and said that he wanted an offline product. The reason for this was that he did not have a website to host the timeline, and also he wanted a cdrom to give to funders.

So the primary purpose of the cd would be a promotional tool to give to funding providers. We agreed that we would place 3 interviews on the cdrom, with a link to a pdf document holding the stories for all interviews.

So we began the build for the Flash timeline.

Mission 2 Man Brief

2007-02-16T10:41:00.000Z

We were given our 2 man briefs. I am working with Lindsey and we chose the brief for Riverside Community Centre in Cardiff. This brief relates to Riverside's 'How Far?' project. How Far? is a project which records the 'distance travelled' in people's life long learning. This involves interviews being conducted with individuals. They are asked what they found was ok and not ok with what they experienced and learned in life. This is grouped under the headings of what they learned/experienced at Home, School, Work, in their Community, and what they hope for in the Future.

The Riverside community has been an independent charity running for 30 years. It has been an education provider for 5 years. There has been a focus on women, due to initially a direction of tackling gender inequality since the 1970s. But now they are working with men as well as women and minority communities. They are currently running I.T. lessons for the elderly Chinese community.

We had a meeting at Riverside with Allan Herbert. We discussed how to put Allan's Word document timeline which illustrates people's learning experiences, into a more interactive format:

· Allan stated that he would like a timeline representing someone’s life of learning, in an interactive and visual way.

· He would like it to be ideally easily updatable, a cd rom, that he could give as a tool to people to record the interviews.

· He liked the idea of clicking on part of someone’s story and more information appearing a box that zooms into view.

· The VLSC and European logos need to be on the Flash component.

This was a productive meeting, in particular with regard to learning about the client process. It was initially quite hard to unpack what the client was after. Also, Allan eventually wants a software application which the timeline would be an updatable template that people could just add their stories and text by clicking directly onto the speech bubbles and popups.

Flash Brief Completion

2007-01-06T17:28:00.000Z

The Flash Creative Brief has now been completed. I am pleased with the final outcome. I think that we achieved all that we set out to, and the client was very pleased with the final product. The main difficulty we had was they we were more developers than designers, so the design was according to our skillset and abilities. However, the client was happy with the layout, colour scheme and design.

Here is the final design of the menu:

Here is the design of the food exercise:

Here is the final outcome, delivered to the client:

My writing exercise:
http://www.d10dev-studio.com/ZoeBritnell/food/food.swf

Shamim's match them up exercise:
http://www.d10dev-studio.com/ZoeBritnell/shamim/flags2.swf

For the purposes of D10, and incorporating the 2 exercises under one menu, I created a menu to link them together. This was initially challenging, as the first menu, when you clicked and entered into one of the exercises, the buttons would not work as they were looking for the base level 0, which was now the menu movie.swf, not the French exercise movie swf file. To work around this, I used loadmovienum, so that when the exercise was loaded it was then the new level 0.

Here is the link to the menu and the exercises:
http://www.d10dev-studio.com/ZoeBritnell/menu/menu2.swf

Presentation to Client

2007-01-06T17:10:00.000Z

We had our final meeting at Sequence a few days before the final deadline. This put pressure on us to make sure that we had the final product to present ahead of schedule, but we managed it. Phil and Steve were at the meeting again, as was the client, Cath Murphy. They were all very pleased with what we had achieved in the time frame. They were especially pleased that we had managed to tie the exercises in with the XML files. Phil stated that we had 'over delivered' in the sense that we had delivered over and above what they had expected.

As we had already uploaded our exercises, the client had some changes that she wanted us to do before the final deadline. This was a productive meeting to be able to have some valid experience of meeting a client, although in the 'real world' we would have met the client at the beginning of the project, not at the end. Never the less, the changes she requested were minor, and as follows:

*To make the instructions for the exercises as generic as possible for all writing and match them up French exercises, so they can be used in the future.

*To remove the exit button as it was not needed.

*To make sure that the exercises would be able to pull in the XML data on a loop basis, so that they would be capable of up to 10 possible answers per question.

*To remove the title on each exercise.

*To make it clear that the instructions are non-interactive and not part of the actual quiz.

*To create a page where the user can choose whether to read the instructions or go straight to the quiz.

We had already anticipated and planned to make some of these changes, and we set about implementing them in the final few days of the brief.

Overall the client was very happy and said that she like the design and layout of the quizzes and would be interested in working with myself and Shamim in the future.

Flash Build

2007-01-06T16:52:00.000Z

Having ascertained the scope of the project and which direction to take we set about our respective tasks. Shamim had already begun to research the drag and drop technique, so he continued to develop a match the flags French exercise for Year 7. I decided to do a writing exercise for the same age group, so I took on the food French exercise.

We have already designed some initial mock ups of the exercises, and began to now build them in Flash. In building the writing exercise, I initially used arrays to pull in the picture content. Only after further training in XML was I able to finalise the exercise with adaptations to accomodate the XML.

We carried out some testing with other people and other versions of Flash. Here were the findings, which we implemented:

On the writing exercise -
*When you click on the check button and have got the answer right, the next arrow should flash, to encourage the user to go onto the next question.
*There should be a results page at the end with all the possible correct answers.
*A moving cursor and a border around the instructions, so it doesn't look interactive.

Match them up exercise -
*To make the text and flags larger.
*To adjust the actionscript so that it is not possible to drop 2 flags on top of eachother.
*To have some feedback on how well they are doing.

Base Camp

2007-01-06T16:18:00.000Z

Back at base camp we drew up a Gantt chart, to monitor how the project is going, and to set key milestones. We also carried out some research on offline and online language exercises, to broaden our ideas on what to do. We looked at the following sites, at it stated on the brief that the client is looking for something like this -
www.oswego.org/ocsd-web/quiz/mquiz.asp?filename=salut
www.oswego.org/ocsd-web/match/dragflip.asp?filename=hobbies

We liked the simple style of these exercises, which suits the age range that we are aiming at - 11 year olds. These exercises had large buttons and text. It was obvious what to do, and there was good use of pictures and feedback where needed.

We also looked at www.vocabulary.co.il/ , which had an example of a hangman game exercise, and a multiple choice quiz.

www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primary/french had a good menu to follow.

http://funschool.kaboose.com/arcade/language/index.html has number language games.

We also looked at the Eurotalk Interactive Learn Italian cd roms for children. This was good to see how they, for instance, do 'match them up' exercises. However, the design was not that great and the naviagtion not very simple.

Sequence Meeting

2007-01-06T16:11:00.000Z

Our first meeting at Sequence was with myself, Shamim, Phil Murphy, and Steve Brewer - a web developer. This was a very productive meeting as we established what they were expecting of us. They did not was a CMS system, Sequence have one set up for this website. They just wanted us to create the exercises to feed into the XML files. Also, we checked with Phil that it was ok to go ahead and create 2 French exercises for Year 7. They were pleased, as these exercises are aimed at the younger end of the age range, which is well suited to Flash exercises as it makes them more visually appealing.

We also established that they wanted us to use the existing pictures on the website. This was good news, as both Shamim and myself are more developers than designers, so it meant that we could concentrate on the technical side.

I knew after this meeting that it was vital that we created the exercises so that they worked with the existing XML files, as this is what the client was after.

Flash Creative Brief

2007-01-06T15:58:00.000Z

Towards the end of the Christmas term we were given our Flash briefs. I am in a team with Shamim and we have been given a brief from Sequence. This is quite a challenging brief as it requires us to adapt some exercises from DHTML into Flash, drawing the content from XML files. As both Shamim and I have limited previous experience in Flash, and XML is completely new to us, this was going to be a fast learning curve. We have been asked to adapt some exercises from the website: www.languageskills.co.uk . By creating some of these exercises in Flash 8, and using the XML files, it is hoped that we would develop an authoring template, whereby future adapations of existing exercises into Flash would be build using this template.

One of our first questions to Phil Murphy at Sequence would be are they also asking for a CMS, as mentioned on the brief. Also, the scope of the project is needed to be narrowed down as there are hundreds of language exercises on the website, and we need to check which ones they would like us to build.

Flash Slideshow

2006-12-04T14:16:00.000Z

Here is a slideshow that I created in Flash:

pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" />

Flash Training

2006-12-04T09:45:00.000Z

Last week we had Flash training. This was great training as we covered alot of the basics. We were taught how to do motion tweening and shape tweening. We also learning about buttons, movie clips and graphics. It is important when creating a flash movie that you don't generally draw straight onto the stage. One of the times you can do this is to create a mask. However, you generally create a graphic for a still image, a movie clip if you want to apply tweening etc, and a button speaks for itself.

We also created a basic flash photo gallery using actionscript controlling the movie. I also enjoyed creating a MP3 player, using actionscript to show the position and duration of the song.

Here is a motion tween I created, with the car following a motion path:

Sounds Like Music

2006-11-27T09:49:00.000Z

Last week we had 2 days training on creating sounds and music. The first day consisted of an overview of Audacity, which I had used once before when we created our digital stories. It was good to have a more detailed rundown on how to use this software. We were also given a general overview of the different file formats for music such as mp3, wav, aiff, oggs and midis. I hadn't previously realised that midis work abit like xml files, in that they are a way to store information and a 'container' for music. For instance, on the second day we had a look at Reason and imported some music midi files. I used the track 'Men in Black' and assigned different instruments to e.g. the drums, guitar etc on the track. It sounded similar to the original, but not the same. On the first day on Audacity we all recorded our voices with reading out lines of a section in the novel Moby Dick, and then saved them as wav files. We then imported them all into Audacity and tried to alter the levels of each person's file to obtain similar sound levels. We were also taught about 'clipping' which means when the sound that has been recorded or imported is too loud and 'clips'. You can then then use the effect of 'normalising' the levels to sort this out.

It was a helpful couple of days, although I think I will need to practice making music in Reason to become more comfortable with it.

Dreamweaver Brief Mission Complete

2006-11-21T14:15:00.000Z

The Dreamweaver Creative Brief has now been completed. We have finished testing, and the final version is now on the web. The website can be viewed at:

www.d10dev-studio.com/NicolasFinch/factory

I am pleased with the final outcome. We had a meeting with Martin at Atticus last week which went well. He said he liked the design, which was in keeping with the style of the magazine, and that he thought we had done well to get as far as we had in the short space of time.

This week has entailed writing self-evaluations of our performance on the project, and a joint team document logging all of our research and stages of the development. I think that for this website, if we did further development, it would be good to have a fully integrated content management system, and for the video showcase, a dynamic page where when you click on the thumbnails of the video it loads the clip in the same page.

Overall, I think that it has been a rapid learning curve. I have learned CSS, some basics in ASP.net, and what is involved in the design mock up stage.

Website mock ups and build

2006-11-14T10:04:00.000Z

We have completed our designs of the website. It was good practice to learn to create a mock up in Photoshop. We created a few samples, and emailed them to Martin to choose and comment on which one he liked best. We tried to keep the design in line with the style of the magazine, with an emphasis on photos. The site will have a random image appearing from the magazine as a background to the site everytime a user loads the page. This will help to give a fresh look to the site. There is simple navigation and a feature is the ability to download archive PDFs of previous issues.

Martin came back to us and decided that the design below is the one we should go for, which we were pleased about:

So we have started to build the content of the site using Cascading Style Sheets. My role has mainly been to build the template using CSS, and to create the Access databases, mailing list, subscribe and contact forms. This has been really useful for me, as I am new to CSS and ASP.net for the databases. It has been a steep learning curve. Nic has been looking into the News blog and tweaking the CSS and formatting, which has been important to get the site layout correct.

I was pleased with my first go at CSS as we ran it through the W3C Webstandards validation and it came back validated and error free.

For the rest of this week, we will finish placing the content into the site, checking the layout, testing it, for the Friday deadline. We have a meeting with Martin at Atticus tomorrow to discuss the progress of the brief, and next week we will present it to the client.

Dreamweaver Brief

2006-11-14T09:36:00.000Z

This is a bit of a blog catch up. We have had some training on Dreamweaver, and have now started our first brief. The training included the following:

Navigation and file structure.
A tour of Cascading Style Sheets.
ASP.net and the creation of forms linked to Access databases. This is useful for mailing lists and subscribe forms.
A mail form for contact details.

I found the training on ASP.net helpful as it gave me a start to learn something I have always wanted to know how to do. Having used Access before, there was some element of familiarity. However, ASP.net is completely new to me.

We were given our briefs and put into teams of two. I am in a team with Nic and we have the Factory Magazine brief. There are 2 teams that have this brief, and the 4 of us went to see Martin at Atticus Media who set the brief. He outlined what we needed to achieve, and some background to the client. The website needs to be in keeping with the style of the magazine, which is stylish and has a strong emphasis on photos.

It was outlined to us that, taking into account we are trainees, some aspects of the brief are to create mailing list and subscribe forms using ASP.net, download PDF options for archive magazine issues, a video showcase using Flash for movie clips, and a news update page. Also on the brief was the creation of a website to download to mobile phones, however, it was stated that we have to just understand how this would be done.

It is a challenging brief for our first one, but I am looking forward to learning ASP.net and how to design a magazine site.

Maya FTV Ident Animation

2006-10-26T13:53:00.000Z

All of last week, we had intensive training on Maya. It was quality training. We covered a vast range of topics including modelling, animation, dynamics such as putting a wind effect on an animation, and rendering.

We were given a brief to produce a TV animated ident for a fictional music channel. I thought of FTV as the name for my TV station (F for future or Funk music). I created a dancefloor scene with animated spheres which have hair and eyes to become characters. I included a few coloured spotlights to give a dancefloor impression. I also animated the logo to come down in a box that unfolds, and the tag line - the future of music here and now also snaps into view.

It was a challenging week, as we had to learn alot in a few days, but I am pleased with the outcome.

Here is my animation -

Why I Bothered - Digital Story

2006-10-13T15:39:00.000Z

Digital Storytelling

2006-10-13T13:24:00.000Z

This week has been spent on creating a 2 minute digital short. We were given a few lessons in what makes a good story including -

What is digital storytelling -
-Modern expression of ancient art of storytelling to share knowledge, wisdom and values.
-Stories were told around the campfire, then moved to screen, then to the computer.
-Used by community groups.

What's needed-
-Using low cost
-Desktop computers
-Digital capture devices - cameras and flatbed scanners
-editing software
-personal photo archives - a compelling short multi-media story
-can be published on internet or transmitted on t.v.

Resources - www.storycenter.org - runs many workshops.

You choose the story to tell. You keep control.

7 Elements -

1) A Point of View (personal view)

From the 1st person. Think about a goal and then work backwards.
Sometimes we forget the story, but we remember it's point.

2) A Dramatic Question

A desire-action-realization model.

3) Emotional Content

Moment in a story where we are emotionally engaged. Can happen anywhere.
This effect is a result of a truthful approach to the material.
Examples are death and our sense of loss, love and loneliness, confidence and vulnerability, acceptance and rejection.

4) The gift of your voice

Use your own voice in the voiceover.

5) Power of the soundtrack

We all walk around with a soundtrack running through our head.
They set the mood of our day, can perceive the visual information streaming into our eyes.

6) Economy

Show what is necessary whilst keeping the story visually rich and moving forward.

7) Pacing

The rhythm of story determines much of what sustains an audience interest.

Getting Started
Finding your story -
Start with a small idea.
As you build up your raw material, you are also working your storytelling.
Get feedback, reading material to someone .

Genres of Story
-Character stories - how we are inspired, loved, find meaning. These stories tell us more about ourselves and details of our life story.
-Memorial stories - honouring and remembering people.
-Story about an event in my life - To travel or go on an adventure is an invitation to challenge ourselves, to change our perspectives about our lives, to reassess.
-Accomplishment stories - these stories easily fit into the desire/struggle/realisation structure.
-Story about a place in my life - insights into this place give a sense of your values, and connection to community.
-Story about what I do - we all have unique ways of perceiving and valuing our jobs.
-Other personal stories - recovery stories - overcoming a challenge in life, like a health crisis or personal obstacle is the archetype in human story.
-Love stories
-Discovery stories - the process of learning is a rich field to mine.

We also had a script-writing workshop by Catherine Lindstrum which was helpful. She went over our scripts with us. She emphasized that we need lots of detail to make a story interesting. I rewrote my script to try and adhere to her suggestions. After much deliberation, I have decided to do a piece on Why I came to Wales, and why I have stayed in Wales. It was a challenge to get the photos to fit the script, but I finished my story today. I used Audacity to edit my voice over, and I used Adobe Premier to piece it together with music and pictures. I am quite pleased with the finished product.

Multimedia Presentation

2006-10-13T13:01:00.000Z

This is abit of a blog catch up. Last Friday, a few of us did our presentations on multimedia pioneers. I did mine on Douglas Engelbart. It went better than expected, and talked for about 15 minutes with questions afterwards on the man who pioneered the mouse, amongst other things. I spoke about Engelbart's vision of augmenting computers to help us to share knowledge, and then be more able to solve problems. I included a clip from the famous 1968 'Mother of all demos'. I also showed a timeline of how the design of the mouse has evolved since its 1968 inception, culminating in the Mac's "Mighty Mouse".

Illustrator training and BBC

2006-10-05T13:12:00.000Z

On Tuesday we had a day's training on Illustrator. This was good because I have never used it before. This is largely because I have boxed it as an artist's tool, not to be used by amateur designers like myself. Although I find drawing challenging to say the least (!!), it was great to have an overview of how to use Illustrator. It was a pleasant surprise to discover that when you draw with the paintbrush tool, when you have finished drawing your line, Illustrator helps to curve it properly.

We learnt how to join up separate lines and pathways. The mesh tool is also useful, especially if you are wanting to create a globe effect. You can also create your own symbols and paintbrushes.

We were given our brief on the mock up of a game or website. Initially I thought I would like to do the game, as this is new territory for me. However, after an afternoon on Illustrator trying to draw a character that looks like a chef, but looked more like the Pope instead, I think I have decided to do the website assignment. I do find drawing a challenge and it can be frustrating as I know what I want to produce, but struggle to draw it.

Yesterday we visited the BBC New Media department. This was interesting and informative. A range of people from producers, developers, designers and project managers came to speak to us. We had a run down on how they operate and the issues involved in creating Flash and HTML sites, and what considerations each person has to be aware of depending on their role.

Photoshop training and S4C

2006-10-03T09:52:00.000Z

Yesterday we had Photoshop training. This was a good fast-track to learning shortcuts and correct ways of methods such as masking. Although I have used Photoshop before, I am self-taught, so it is good to get the low-down on the right ways to do things, and I have never used masks before. We had an overview in the morning, and then in the afternoon we put into practice what we had learned with editing some photos.

I began to edit a doorway picture. I learned a great way to trace a part of a photo that is a tricky shape was to use the extract command. This is great to know as I have struggled to trace images before. I also learned how to turn text into an image by rasterizing it.

We then went to visit S4C, and met the team on the New Media department. Their team was smaller than I had anticipated, but it was good to see how all the roles in the team fitted together. The manager, Rachel, gave us a run-down of what they do, as well as a brief description of the issues involved with making a bi-lingual website. Issues included- when leaving space for text you have to leave alot more space for Welsh as it takes more text. Also, when thinking of short words for navigation, when you think of the English, you have to think what would be the equivalent in Welsh. She also mentioned what to think about when designing a Flash game for pre-school children - such as obviously they can't read, so use of text is minimal. Also, their coordination is still in the early stages of development, so their mouse control is less. To overcome this, all the graphics have to be big and spaced out.

It was a useful, if brief, look at how the media in Wales organise and operate their website.

Cd-rom evaluations

2006-09-29T12:49:00.000Z

Yesterday we evaluated some cd-roms and dvds. This was a good exercise at using the 10 Jakob Nielson's Heuristics to evaluate each one.

The 10 Heuristics are:
Match between system and the real world -
Looking out for how well the design, words and icons are similar to what a user would be familiar with in the real world i.e. no jargon.
Visibility of system status -
Is there any indication e.g. on a flash site of the percentage download, or feedback to tell the user where and what is happening on a site - such as buttons lighting up with the mouse rolls-over.
User control and freedom -
How well the site is structured with navigation - i.e. is it easy for the user to go forwards and backwards in one step, and also get back to the main menu.
Error prevention -
Have there been steps taken to prevent errors from happening and give warnings to users to stop them doing something that will cause an error.
Recognition rather than recall -
Does a site/cd rom etc have a simple and consistent way of navigating around it and methods, so that the user quickly recognises and remembers what to do , or is it more complex and they will have re-read and understand what to do.
Aesthetic and minimalist design -
The site should have a good looking and minimalist design, with relevant words because every word that isn't relevant will compete with the ones that do.
Flexibility and efficiency of use -
This includes looking for accelerators - things that help the advanced user to skip steps and e.g. get back to home by clicking on an icon.
Helps users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors -
Error messages that have no codes and help the user in plain language to understand and recover from the error.
Help and documentation -
If needed, it should be clear, easy to follow and the file not too large.
Consistency and Standards -
Navigation, fonts, colours, buttons, and symbols should mean the same thing throughout the site/cd-rom or dvd.

We tested 5 different packages -
Go for Gold (an interactive cd-rom with games and learning related to the Manchester 2000 Commonwealth Games). This wasn't very good as it had horrible graphics developed with Director, the games weren't very engaging and the layout was confusing.
Music dvd - this was a clean, great graphics layout, with aesthetic design. The navigation was good, and its only flaw was some of the font sizes were abit small.
Being John Malkovich dvd - The design of the menu was good, drawing themes from the film. However, the information icon lead to a link that wasn't very helpful as it just described what all the different icons meant, which we later discovered wasn't constistently used throughout the links. Also, there was little in the way of accelerators and the chapter selection was limited as you have to use the arrows.
Learning Italian cd-rom - this wasn't great as the first cd didn't work at all on the pc. The kids version did, and some of the games were effective learning tools, but there wasn't much feedback on the buttons, and the layout was abit confusing.
Eye Toy PS2 game - this was an excellent game. Once we had grasped the navigation around the menus using the camera almost 'touch screen effect'. The help animated file was excellent and very clear, and the games were engaging.

Overall, I thought that this was a good exercise to do, to get used to evaluating games, dvds etc, and understanding where Heuristics play a part in planning.

Heuristics made simple

2006-09-27T14:35:00.000Z

This afternoon we have had a presentation on Jakob Nielson's Heuristics. What's that you might ask? Nielson was a pioneer in rules for usability on websites. It was great to have a run-down on the 10 usability heuristics (or 'rules of thumb'). We were shown examples such as how the bbc website is great at layout, remembering that people read from top-left to bottom-right. Also, looking at their help documentation and how it is easy to read as it is not a massive pdf file to download, but is right there for if you have a muppet-moment and need something clarified.

Another key rule is to be consistent with colours, menus, as well as providing feedback for users by highlighting things when they click on certain links/functions. These rules are all well and good as far as I am concerned with making websites the best they can be.

Evaluating Websites

2006-09-27T13:09:00.000Z

Well it is day 3 of d10, and for a quick summary of yesterday afternoon's task, we were given 4 websites to evaluate with the following questions -
1. How easy is it to use?
2. What audience is it made for?
3. Is it a commercial/educational/entertainment product?
4. Is it obvious how to use it, even before you click?
5. Can you tell how it was made?
6. What clues are there?
7. Does it contain mostly image/text/sound?
8. Are you satisfied with the way it works?

We evaluated the following websites -
http://www.billyharveymusic.com
I thought this was quite a good music site, with some interesting navigation, once we had worked it out. It is quite an interactive experience for the user with different animated photos to click on.
http://demo.fb.se/e/if/badluck
This was an advertising/education demo for an insurance company. It was quite simple to use, mainly for homeowners to learn about health and safety.
http://www.ownyourc.com
This was an anti-smoking site for teenagers in Colarado. It mainly had a community feel with lots of colours and animation for young people to explore, which was good. However, one criticism which came out in the session that it was perhaps too subversive in what it was really about, and takes awhile to discover the anti-smoking theme.
http://www.flymetothemoon.es
This is a site for a design agency, with a flash animation which guides the user to a few descriptions of what the agency does, but omits to give their portfolio, which I think is a mistake as that is what you want to see from a design agency.

This was an interesting exercise and got me thinking about what programs were used to make the sites.

New Beginnings

2006-09-26T11:02:00.000Z

I just have started a course as an Interactive Media trainee. This will be an intensive 6 months learning curve, but I hope that it will give me a solid background to interactive media, and the tools to develop and design on the web.

After yesterday's induction, we have now launched into the course with an overview of 'What is Multimedia'. This gave snapshots of the key developments and history of the interactive media industry, much of which is largely fresh and new to me. I look forward to going into more depth and having intensive training not only on Dreamweaver and Flash, but also 3D software such as Maya.

I learned how the web has been developing more recently, with emphasis on video applications and how this has expanded to mobile phones. It is interesting to think around the usability issues of developments in video and the web, such as the short attention span of users when viewing a small screen such as on the mobile phone.

Also, thinking through the implications of a 2-tier web, with the potential of payment for some of what the web has to offer. This has accessibility issues as well as the impact of excluding some users from the interactive experience on the web.

I know it will be an intensive 6 months, but I am looking forward to the variety of input we will have. We also get to check out some places in the industry, starting with a trip to S4C.